DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.635#0069
56 BENARES, THE SACRED CITY
he was a Kshatriya of noble birth. His father,
Siddartha, was the head of his clan in a petty state,
the capital of which was Vaisali, about twenty-seven
miles north of the modern Patna. Mahavira was born
about 599 B.C., his mother being the daughter of
Cetaka, the king.
On the death of his father, which happened when
Mahavira was thirty years old, he, like his great con-
temporary, left his home and family and adopted a
purely religious life, first entering the order of Pares-
nath, the orthodox monastic order of his clan, and
afterwards, like so many other religious devotees at
that time, becoming a wandering Bhiksu, preaching
new doctrines and establishing a new religious order.
He imposed upon his followers the rule of absolute
nudity, a rule which afterwards led to the two great
divisions of the Jain sect being named the Svetambaras,
"the white clothed", and the Digambaras, "the un-
clothed ". The name of the Jains is derived from the
title of Jina, or " spiritual conqueror ", which was given
to Mahavira by his followers.
The Jains hold the same tenets as the Buddhists
regarding the sacredness of all life, but differ from
them in accepting the orthodox Hindu view of self-
mortification by bodily penances. They believe in the
separate existence of the soul, which the Buddhists
deny, and worship twenty-four saints, or Tirthankars,
who have finished the cycles of human existences.
Mahavira, their teacher, is considered the twenty-
fourth.
Jainism is the only one of the early Indian mon-
astic orders which has handed down almost intact its
tenets and organization to the present day. The con-
he was a Kshatriya of noble birth. His father,
Siddartha, was the head of his clan in a petty state,
the capital of which was Vaisali, about twenty-seven
miles north of the modern Patna. Mahavira was born
about 599 B.C., his mother being the daughter of
Cetaka, the king.
On the death of his father, which happened when
Mahavira was thirty years old, he, like his great con-
temporary, left his home and family and adopted a
purely religious life, first entering the order of Pares-
nath, the orthodox monastic order of his clan, and
afterwards, like so many other religious devotees at
that time, becoming a wandering Bhiksu, preaching
new doctrines and establishing a new religious order.
He imposed upon his followers the rule of absolute
nudity, a rule which afterwards led to the two great
divisions of the Jain sect being named the Svetambaras,
"the white clothed", and the Digambaras, "the un-
clothed ". The name of the Jains is derived from the
title of Jina, or " spiritual conqueror ", which was given
to Mahavira by his followers.
The Jains hold the same tenets as the Buddhists
regarding the sacredness of all life, but differ from
them in accepting the orthodox Hindu view of self-
mortification by bodily penances. They believe in the
separate existence of the soul, which the Buddhists
deny, and worship twenty-four saints, or Tirthankars,
who have finished the cycles of human existences.
Mahavira, their teacher, is considered the twenty-
fourth.
Jainism is the only one of the early Indian mon-
astic orders which has handed down almost intact its
tenets and organization to the present day. The con-